What's the Future of PN Web Hosting?

[#1]

Web Hosting seems to be in limbo at the moment.
The Plesk trial seems to have been abandoned, or  at least, it's no longer available.
The proposed date of April for the closing of the CGI platform has presumably been scrapped. It can hardly be phased out without an alternative.
What are the current plans for this platform?

[#2]

I believe the PN party line at the moment is that:
- customers who aren’t on the preview PAYH trial and want active server (e.g. PHP) webspace
and
- new customers
should use the full PAYH service (at around £5 p.m. per domain).
PN has committed to retain indefinitely ‘home pages’ (non active server) webspace for those who already use it. 
Back in October 2008, Ian Wild (PN) posted that “the closure of the CGI platform will occur sometime around April 2009, although this is subject to change….. sites hosted on CGI related services will at some point need to be moved”. Many customers – including me -  with active server code read the runes and shifted everything or at least the active server parts to preview PAYH.
On 25th March, Kev Mawson (PN) posted "Anyone that now wants a Plesk account, will need to go on to one of the PAYH products". In his original post, Ian made non-specific references to an “eventual new advanced hosting platform” based on PAYH. Whether this is Plesk 9 with FastCGI (which removes the current Safe Mode problem) or something else has not been made known.

[#3]

Quote

Many customers – including me -  with active server code read the runes and shifted everything or at least the active server parts to preview PAYH.

Well I tried but the restrictions of safe mode operation combined with the lack of other installed packages prevented me from doing so.
I would have thought it wouldn't be too much to ask to have an upate on what the current thinking is!

[#4]

I agree Paul. And bits of my PHP stuff (e.g. phpBB forums) have needed d-i-y workarounds of one sort of another to circumvent the Safe Mode restriction. And one hopes that some of the other snags (magic_quotes being enabled, for example) will get sorted out when the 'final' offering appears.

[#5]

Quote from: decomplexity

PN has committed to retain indefinitely ‘home pages’ (non active server) webspace for those who already use it.

Does that mean the CGI platform will remain open?

Quote from: decomplexity

I believe the PN party line at the moment is that: - customers who aren’t on the preview PAYH trial and want active server (e.g. PHP) webspace and - new customers should use the full PAYH service (at around £5 p.m. per domain).

So customers who aren't on the preview (and can't now join) will have to pay £5/month for something other customers who joined the trial are getting free!!!
It's certainly very confusing and requires some clarification.
PlusNet are generally very open but not this time for some reason.

[#6]

It is very frustrating that nobody from PN seems to want to comment on any of the threads regarding current and future position of CCGI and/or PAYH

[#7]

Hi
When we first launched the trial, the initial plan was for this to replace the ccgi platform, although this may still happen in the future there are no plans to do this at this moment in time. If we were to close the ccgi platform then we would make an announcement to let all customers that use the service know about the plans. The homepages service will not be effected by which ever route is taken.
Throughout the trial we have listened to customers feed back and will be taking the feedback on board and will use this to help us to continue to build on the platform moving forwards.
When we launched the trial for Plusnet customers, there was already a number of PAYH customers already using the platform.
PAYH will continue offering hosting solutions to customers going forwards, there are no plans at all to stop this.
With regards to the Plesk updates, these will be done, but at a time when we are happy that the updates will not cause any or minimum issues to the customer base. At the end of the day PAYH customers pay for a service and we dont want to become the guinea pig to test out new updates.
Going forwards we will be launching 2 new packages for Plusnet customers only, that will allow them to use the full PAYH service including taking advantage of the email platform and having control to add your own domains.
We have setup a section for Plusnet / PAYH customers to now contact us via the Plusnet member centre by going to http://help.plus.net > Sales and Orders > Plusnet Hosting where any tickets raised will come directly to ourselves. 
If you do have any other questions, then please feel free to let me know.

[#8]

Thanks for the explanation.
Things are somewhat clearer now and it will be interesting to see what the 2 new packages will be!

[#9]

Can I ask why your not choosing the Plesk (PAYH?) package as a final definitive end package supplied by F9?

[#10]

The reason I don't go for the PAYH is because I don't have a serious use for web hosting and I am not prepared to pay the £4 or £5 required. If I was, I think I would go for a dedicated Hosting Co.
For me it's just a hobby. I basically use my site as a desktop.
Originally the CCGI platform was being scrapped but there was a free version of the PAYH system for light users. Now the free version has been removed and the CCGI platform is not being scrapped at the moment (see above).